


Forging Home

by NeverKnightfire



Series: The Heart’s Proximity [4]
Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Alastor Has a Heart (Hazbin Hotel), Alastor the magical mad scientist, Domestic Bliss, Dorks in Love, Husk Swears (Hazbin Hotel), Husk with cat behavior, M/M, Soft Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Soft Husk (Hazbin Hotel), Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27718439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverKnightfire/pseuds/NeverKnightfire
Summary: Alastor should have come with a warning label attached. That was an irrefutable fact, and Husk would swear by it until the day he was erased by an angel’s blade.
Relationships: Alastor/Husk (Hazbin Hotel)
Series: The Heart’s Proximity [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2028173
Comments: 12
Kudos: 90





	Forging Home

Alastor should have come with a warning label attached. That was an irrefutable fact, and Husk would swear by it until the day he was erased by an angel’s blade. 

It wasn’t just that the demon was loud and possessed of a sense of humor so dark that it put Satan to shame. It was more than his tendency to break into a bouncy, jazzy song and pull everyone in the vicinity into an impromptu musical number at any given moment. It was even beyond the cannibalistic hunger that meant those who crossed him often found themselves devoured, sometimes still alive.

No, the most dangerous, damnable part of the Radio Demon was his boundless greed for magical knowledge and the fathomless abandon with which he experimented with his gains. His knowledge was incredibly vast and varied, and his will to divine the furthest limits of his skills was unquestionable. Quite often, Alastor was successful in bending and blending the arcane arts he’d seized for his own into new spells, potions, and so forth. 

Other times, Husk was startled out of an afternoon rooftop bask in the midday hell fires when the entire structure of their home seized, trembled, and then twisted to burst open like a damned Christmas cracker.

“The fuck did that moron do now?” Husk asked himself as he sailed through the air, eyeing the oncoming ground with annoyed resignation. 

It was too much trouble to sweep open his wings and struggle to be properly airborne, so he curled to the side and let Gravity pull him back into a too-friendly embrace. A quick tuck and roll and he was on the ground, mostly unscathed but a bit dustier than he'd have preferred. He sat in the dirt, staring at the massive magical hole in the red and turquoise structure and wondering if he should be concerned about the gleeful peals of cackling laughter that were coming from it. 

Alastor came stumbling out of the cottage moments later, breathless with amusement at the huge hole that had eliminated the pair of gabled dormer windows and most of the front wall. He was missing his suit jacket and monocle, and his entire person was coated with some kind of dirt or hocus pocus leavings. His antlers appeared to be smoldering. One of the singed turquoise and red-painted shutters gave up its valiant struggle against the inevitable, falling to the ground in a sad heap of charred wood.

"HA! HA-H-HUSKER!" he shouted, waving an arm at the unamused cat demon, "No need to worry! Just a minor setback!" 

"Ya know you're on fire, right?" Husk retorted, watching the dark fumes curling lazily from the Radio Demon's antlers with morbid fascination. 

Alastor teleported himself past the rubble that previously was a very comfortable sitting room and plopped down into the dirt and thin grass beside his husband. "Nothing to worry about, my darling! I hope you don't mind if I smoke! Ha ha!" He threw an arm around Husk, yanking him close enough that the cat demon's nose wrinkled at the pungent smell coming off of his crisped hair. 

"Al, go clean up, you smell like a burning wig factory that someone put out with blood. What the hell did you just do, anyway?" 

A bright-eyed, manic grin was all the warning Husk was given. Without so much as a by your leave, Al's soot-smudged face was abruptly being rubbed in Husk's chest fur, a new muffled bout of diabolical laughter shaking his whole frame. Husk's yowl of fury was drowned out by his husband's unrepentant mirth as he wrestled the cat demon to the ground in a relentless, filth-covered cuddle. 

"You crazy son of a bitch!" Husk complained as he tried and failed to squirm away. "What the hell's gotten into you, brain damage?" 

Alastor crossed his arms on Husk's chest, resting his chin atop them and regarding the cat demon with a supernova smile. It was like dawn in the desert, as warmth blossomed over the night-chilled sands. It was like glowing candles on a childhood birthday cake, gleaming with infinite promise as they awaited your dearest wish.

"You're not allowed to be mad at me," Alastor informed him smugly. "It's all your fault that I've found myself in this particular fix, you know." He shifted, freeing one hand to tap Husk repeatedly on his heart-shaped nose. "All." Tap. "Your." Tap. "Fault." Tap-tap-tap. 

"You're about a thousand years too early to start blaming me for the crazy shit you do, ya know that, right?" Husk complained, his abused nose twitching. "If ya think I'm ignorant about the kind of shit you've been doing since before ya even died, you've got another thing coming!" His tail swatted from side to side in an annoyed wag of warning. "I ain't done a damned thing t' put you on this track, an' you damn well know it!" 

Alastor's beatific smile turned then, his brows arcing briefly higher towards his hairline before falling almost to his lids as his eyes squinted shut with mirth. His mouth fell open with a spirited howl of laughter as he struggled to maintain eye contact with the grumbling Husk beneath him. 

“Oh, my dear, if you only knew!" he finally choked out before surrendering to another explosive bout of giggles. 

Husk grunted in annoyance, resigned to his temporary fate as Alastor's personal cuddle-cushion. One of his wings twinged uncomfortably, pinned beneath him by his husband's enthusiastic embrace. He writhed onto his side, successfully freeing the pained appendage. With a groan of effort he stretched it out for a beat to get the blood flowing once again. The pins and needles sensation faded as Al coughed at the newly freed dust and soil that swirled around them. 

"Really, Husker!" the Radio Demon sputtered, brushing a hand through his hair to dislodge the sediment now added to his own coating of magical soot and grime. 

Inspiration reached out at the sight. Oh, was payback going to be fun. Grooming all the crap from his fur and feathers would be an annoyance later, but that was future Husk’s problem, poor bastard.

“Yeah, because you were so damn pristine before, right?" Husk cackled, reaching out and seizing Alastor by the shoulders and fixing him with a devious grin of his own. "You started this shit, so ya better be ready for me to end it!" Husk's wings fanned open in an arc overhead, rising around them like a pair of cobras preparing to strike. 

"Darling? No, don't you dare!" Al yelped, the realization of just where the two of them were dawning on him too late. This particular depression in the sparse yard was almost free of vegetation for a reason. 

"ENJOY YOUR DUST BATH, AL!" Husk shouted, rolling the two of them on the ground as his wings furiously beat into the air. The Radio Demon squawked with horror as the dirt rose in a thick cloud around them. A moment too late, he remembered that he could teleport and freed himself from his husband's vengeful embrace. 

Alastor righted himself a few feet away, watching with dusty bemusement as Husk rolled and stretched and thrashed in filthy ecstasy. Soon every inch of the cat demon was a grimy, dirty mess, but Husk's deep, rumbling purr filled the air. Husk's fur and feathers were full of sand and soil when he finally slowed to a stop. For a moment, the only activity from the blissfully purring demon was the lazy sweep of his tail along the ground. 

One harvest moon eye cracked open to regard Alastor as the dust finally settled. The pair said nothing, regarding each other in fond exasperation as the remains of the brightly colored creole cottage creaked pitifully in the background. 

"It's going to take hours to clean you up," the Radio Demon hummed. 

"What, yer volunteering?" Husk retorted. “A guy could get the idea ya like him or some mushy garbage like that.”

“Perish the thought,” Alastor replied with an airy chuckle. “I simply cannot abide the notion of my nice clean floors getting dirty.”

With a dramatic wave of Alastor’s hand, the single-story cottage was repaired. The Radio Demon considered the structure for a moment before snapping his fingers. A new addition sprouted from the rear of the home, growing off of the kitchen like an oddly-hued square weed.

“A concession to your peace of mind and comfort, my darling,” Alastor announced grandly as the rest of the building warped and squeezed to incorporate this new space. “Perhaps it is time that I relegated my home experimentation to a proper study.”

“High damned time,” Husk replied, leaning to shake the excess soil and dust from his coat and plumage. 

“I’m getting close, you know.”

Husk turned to regard his husband with a confused frown. “Close? Close to what?”

Alastor’s arm reached to glide around the cat demon again, sliding beneath his wings with effortless familiarity. “If you could have any wish, my love... what would it be?”

The question was softly voiced, tender and reverent in a manner that most would never believe the Radio Demon capable of. It seemed to urge Husk to dream big, as if there was no limit to the boon he could request.

Something secret, only voiced once before, whispered back in the deepest reaches of Husk’s heart. No, wouldn’t- couldn’t ask for the impossible, no matter how gently his Al’s voice crooned with eager promise. He looked away for a moment, avoiding his husband’s dangerous, soul-searching eyes.

“Uh.. I dunno... a never-empty flask? Cigar of eternal smoking? Maybe... a full-on eternity with you and your dumbass stunts?”

Alastor actually snorted at the last idea, and just like that, Husk found himself trapped in the arresting gaze that owned every part of him. 

Don’t say it, don’t even think it, he coached himself. There are limits. There are hard, hurtful limits and you’ve got no right to push them.

Alastor leaned forward, placing a fond kiss between the two heart-shaped marks just above Husk’s eyebrows. 

“Perhaps I’ll simply surprise you then, is that preferable?”

Husk nodded numbly at the question. Sure, a surprise would be fine. Couldn’t go wrong with something you didn’t expect to be disappointed by. 

What was the worst that could happen?


End file.
